Topic: Wrestling?

Someone is paid to write these promos?

Vince has been personally writing Reigns' promos. His love is a double-edged sword.

Alexandra wrote:Vince has been personally writing Reigns' promos. His love is a double-edged sword.

Sufferin Succotash...

Holy hell. Make him go away.

The sad thing is, Reigns actually DOES have a personality, but their scripting him and booking him like John Cena, because Vince and the writing staff have no idea how to make a new star without ripping off an earlier formula.


Also, I would actually like it if they did more of these sit down interviews with everybody on the roster, a couple a week or so. It would be nice to get to learn more about them, and thus connect with them better and give us a reason to cheer them. They did it with Ryback, and it was good. But like, all we ever know or hear about Dolph Ziggler is that he likes to steal the show, show off, and entertain everybody. That's it. Maybe if we had a reason to like and connect with the guy, we'd get more behind him for reasons other than his over-selling.

Like him or not, Hogan was the total package Vince tries to recreate since he left the WWF for the first time. He had intensity, pride for his country, a catchphrase and the ability to get nearly everyone behind him, despite being Superman. And his supporting cast was so great that they could have easily succeeded him if Vince had really tried with Savage or Ted Dibiase Senior. Warrior was the next best thing but had a personality that Vince could not understand or tolerate. Luger valiantly tried, but never had a chance to really replace Hogan. Hart, Michaels, Sid and Diesel never had a chance against the NWO, again with Hogan in the center. Austin and Rock were certainly oddities in the eyes of Vince, but there he had at least the wherewithal to feed a cash cow when there was one. Cena is a copy of Hogan in every aspect, although most adult wrestling fans would never cheer for him because he sucks in being most of the peoples champion, unlike Hogan, Austin and Rock. Cena is really best described as a company guy, willing to eat shit. And Reigns will suck too if he is forced into that role.

Diesel was part of the nWo. He's Kevin Nash. Which is weird that the lowest drawing WWF champion became a centerpiece of one of the biggest drawing angles of all time (behind the Mega Powers explode and Austin/Mcmahon)

But beyond that, Hogan wasn't a draw from 92 to 96. He was still active to be sure, he was WCW champion but by that time he had lost all luster that had been in decline since pretty much Mania 7.

Is it bad to say I don't watch wrestling xD?

No Jake, its not bad. Plenty of people on AFW don't watch any wrestling of any kind.


What Harrier kinda mentioned, but didn't elaborate on was that, while Hogan had the look and could cut a good promo, and was a decent enough wrestler for his era, he had probably the absolute best supporting cast a guy could ask for.

He worked with heels that were not only the best of their era, but perhaps the best supporting heels of any era in American Pro Wresting history.

I mean, sure, he had his clunker, go nowhere feuds, like with Dino Bravo, Sid Viscous, Zeus, and Yokozuna, but the ones everybody remembers was his stuff with the likes of Sgt. Slaughter, Andre the Giant, King Kong Bundy, Mr. Perfect, Undertaker, Ted Dibiase, Mr. Perfect, Rick Rude, I.R.S, Kamala, Haku, Harley Race, Earthquake, Iron Sheik, Nikolai Volkoff, Macho Man Randy Savage, and of course, Rowdy Roddy Piper.

You can't go wrong with that level of talent working with you. Roman Reigns couldn't look bad working with those guys, and WWF at the time was able to book those guys so that, when they weren't feuding with top guys, they looked good, and even when losing to top guys, they STILL looked good. WWE knew how to book their talent back in those days.

Flubs is mostly right. 92, Hogan was not a draw, but he was also gone most the year after that steroid scandal. He came back in 1993 for his "lets screw over Bret Hart" run" and left WWF in June.

He then was out of the business for a year, only doing his TV show and testifying against Vince McMahon in court during the steroid scandal. (Contrary to what a lot of people believe, Hogan's testimony likely actually damaged the governments case against McMahon, and is seen as one of the primary reasons Vince was found not guilty, as while Hulk admitted to doing steroids, he stated that Vince did not give or sell them to him, nor demanded/insisted/asked that he used them.)

When Hogan returned to wrestling for WCW in 1994 however, to face Ric Flair for the belt, an opportunity that WWF had utterly wasted, he drew their biggest PPV buyrates (Which, something else people tend to forget, was basically the life blood of pro wrestling in America in the late 80's-2000's. TV Ratings mattered of course, but PPV was where the real money was made.)

WCW fans got sick of Hogans stale act a lot sooner than WWF fans did though (Probably because he was on every single week with WCW Saturday Night and later Nitro, plus the Clash of the Champions stuff, and was featured actually more often than he was in WWF.)

plus unlike in WWF, he didn't have nearly the amount of characters to feud with, and the ones he DID have to feud with, were usually nowhere near the level of his WWF supporting cast. Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, and Vader were great of course, but the rest of his opponents? The Dungeon of Doom was his main group of opponents for his first WCW title reign (which lasted 15 goddamn months) and all of them were absolutely awful, including The Giant, who only got better AFTER leaving that terrible group.

Then Macho Man came in and we got Macho Man and Hulk Hogan vs 8 other wrestlers (The Alliance to End Hulkamania) in the worst cage match of all time, Hogan finally dropped the belt (via DQ, cause god forbid anybody beat Hogan clean), and Hogan, now stale beyond belief, took some time off and showed up in 1996's Bash at the Beach, where he became a top draw again with the NWO.

Sgt Slaughter was a clunker of a feud too. But he had good stuff with The Big Bossman and Earthquake